Hello, Brother
by ammcj062
Summary: Special Agent Matthew Adams just got assigned to the BAU and Kronos is only trying to catch his beloved brother's attention. Criminal Minds/Highlander crossover, AUish.
1. Chapter 1

Hotch paces in front of the case board while the rest of the team sits around the conference table, each one of them scouring their brains for the last clue that would put it all together. "Alright," Hotch says, "Let's go over this again." They're all tired, running on their last wires, but the window between victims is closing – and closing fast. He was going to choose another one tonight.

Morgan scrubs his hands over his face and starts the brainstorm process again. "All victims were Caucasian males, mid-twenties, dark brown hair and hazel eyes, over six feet, all dressed the similarly by the Unsub. They were tortured extensively but cause of death was always beheading. Strength of the decapitating blow suggests strong male, early to late twenties, and the angle of the cuts means he's less than six feet tall."

Rossi steps in. "Despite his smaller size he's not a timid man – in fact, he's probably very confrontational and volatile, perhaps trying to make up for his perceived weak size – but he uses a sword, which is hard to transport and even harder to hide in a city, especially after he's just killed someone. Therefore he must have at least passable social skills, despite the disorganized crime scenes. This implies he leaves the scenes like that on purpose. He's confident in his ability, probably to the point of hubris, to remain uncaptured despite the enormous potential for DNA evidence left behind. Most likely above average intelligence, but unlikely to show it in his normal routine."

"Besides victimology and the decapitation," Prentiss continues, "his acts are not extensively planned. There's an adaptability in his kills. His torture changes, the length of time he keeps each victim alive changes, the type of location changes. Given the unstable nature of his routine, it's likely the rigid timeframe isn't for how own benefit but rather for someone else's. The killing isn't the aim of the act, but rather a means. Perhaps it's a message or an attempt to get attention of some kind – not from us, because the clues are too obscure, but for an as-of-yet unknown third party.

"The clues," Hotch directs. Reid takes up the monologue.

"The physical appearances of the victims is significant– but until we know more, we can't be sure if he's using it to simply make his kills more easily identifiable or if they're part of the larger message. It's better to examine the bronze objects left at each scene. Each victim has been found holding one of them in their hands. So far, we've found two horses, a death mask, and a cloud. Given the singularity of the other objects, we can speculate having _two_ horses must be significant in some way…" Reid trails off, looking up at the board where each bronze object has been carefully photographed.

"And the significance of them?" Hotch prompts. There's silence for a moment as the team glances around uneasily. Finally, Morgan scoffs. "Take your pick. Without a more personal angle on the Unsub, it could mean anything. I mean, without a frame of reference we have can't figure out the message, and he's not giving us enough information to do that!" Morgan thumps his hand on the table in anger and goes quiet. "I know," Hotch murmurs bleakly.

To break the tension, Emily sits back in her chair and stretches her arms out. "It's exhausting and we've been working on this for hours. I could really use some coffee."

"Agent Adams went to get a pot." Hotch reminds her. "He should be back soon."

Morgan checked his watch. "He's been gone over twenty minutes. How long does it take to brew some coffee?"

Slowly, Reid's head emerged from the maelstrom of notes covering his area of the table. "Guys," he started. It was easy to catch the reluctance in his voice. "Adam has hazel eyes. If you take away the bleached hair, what do you think he'd look like?" All eyes drifted towards the board of dark-haired hazel-eyed mid-twenty victims.

"Oh, shit," whispered Morgan.

They all lunged into action.

* * *

><p>Methos slinks into the warehouse, coat hanging open and sword easily accessible, a dagger up each sleeve and FBI-issued pistol on his hip. He circles around the perimeter, but in the dark gloom nobody is visible. Kronos wants a confrontation, then. He steps towards the center of the warehouse, spies a piece of loosened concrete, and deliberately grinds his boot against it as he walks over it. The crunch echoes satisfyingly through the building.<p>

The echoes eventually die off into silence, but Methos stays poised, head tilted, listening. There – a rasp of metal on metal, originating higher up in the warehouse, in the metal scaffolding above. Methos ghosts to the nearest staircase, allowing his boot to scuff over one of the steps. Kronos chuckles, somewhere to the left. Methos advances. It's his turn to make a noise; he drags a hand across bleached hair, the bristling noise soft but audible. They've played this game hundreds of times before: call and response, advance and retreat, hide and seek. Kronos leads him across the warehouse, down the steps, and finally stops in the center of the warehouse on top of a platform of a familiar piece of machinery.

He always was a melodramatic bastard.

Kronos chuckles again and whacks the machine with the length of chain in his hands. "Look familiar?" he calls over the clang. "I had it shipped over. Special delivery."

Methos sneers. "How sentimental."

"Let the dagger out, though," he continues blithely, ignoring Methos' remark. "It's so boring waiting for you. All these years avoiding Death, brother – you're out of practice waking up." He swings the chain idly and smiles. "We can always fix that." Pain has always been a part of Kronos' games, as much as the double-speak. Methos forces his face to remain blank, to give away no fear or trepidation. No reaction makes Kronos drop that game, try another. Kronos examines his face carefully, but Methos uses the gloom to his full advantage, shielding himself in the shadows, angling his face just right to give nothing away.

Finally he sighs and tosses the chain at Methos' feet. He smiles a little at the flinch, but it quickly disappears. "I waited while you played your little games with the Highland brat, brother. I stepped back while you played sidekick. I allowed you to masquerade with your pet Watchers. I gave you all the space and time you asked for."

Kronos leaps from his stage to land scant inches in front of Methos, eyes focused on Methos' eyes and breath mingling with Methos' breath as he waits for the echoes to stop and silence to fall again. Finally, when the only noise is Methos' strained breathing, Kronos leans in close and whispers against his brother's ear, "I'm done waiting. It's time to play."

"The game?" Methos whispers back.

Kronos grazes the shell of his ear with his teeth as he talks. "Being a criminal profiler is no fun without someone to spice up all those boring cases of yours, keep your life interesting. I'll let you be the bright-eyed young FBI recruit, if I get to be the serial killer just _fascinated_ with you, who haunts every step of your career and stains your every victory with the inability to capture me. Good luck keeping all those secrets with your entire team breathing down your neck looking for the connection to a mysterious psychopath, brother." The graze against Methos' ear turns into a sharp bite that draws blood, and then Kronos is gone, whirling into the darkness and leaving Methos gasping in his wake.

"Until the next city," Kronos calls back before he disappears completely, "And the next bodies."

Methos stands alone in the warehouse for a long time, one pale hand shakily resting on his broadsword.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Warning – lots of fabricated analyzing going on. I'm not an expert, but hopefully it sounds pseudo-legit.

* * *

><p>The BAU and assorted local cops arrive at the warehouse just as Agent Adams is staggering out, face paler than normal and eyes slightly unfocused, breathing shallow and rabbit-fast but not so close to hyperventilation to be dangerous. There are no obvious wounds or pains – just the aftereffects of shock, symptoms of coming face to face with a man who capabilities you are fully aware of and escaping intact. Hotch holsters his weapon so he can grasp his agent by the shoulders and direct the man's focus. "It was the Unsub?" he asks. Numbly, Adams nods.<p>

The cops efficiently swarm into and around the warehouse, guns drawn, flashlights on and eyes sharp, fanning out to cover the exits and flush out the man. Hotch nods to his own agents to join the search; he'll stay with Adams, glean whatever information he can before the young man forgets or suppresses it, and make sure the EMTs find him for a field examination. Adams sways slightly as he watches them stalk into the warehouse, and Hotch resists the urge to wince. It's a hell of an introduction to the BAU.

"Matthew, are you alright?" There are no visible signs of harm, but behavior experts like them know there's more than one way to hurt a man. "They won't find him," Adams responds in lieu of answering Hotch's question. He's new to the team; Hotch should have expected he'd be afraid to answer a question like that truthfully, fearful of it being considered a weakness. "K-" he stutters, throat convulsing as he tries to speak. After pausing to lick dry lips, he tries again. "He's gone. I- I don't know where."

"It's alright," Hotch soothes, keeping a firm hand on Adams' shoulder. The boy's hardly out of Quantico; he shouldn't have experienced this. Hotch starts carefully steering him towards the ambulance waiting in the back of the pack of emergency vehicles. Adams absently complies, but his eyes remain locked on the warehouse. Looking for the unsub? "He said he'd be back," Adams whispers, looking miserable and scared and young. "For me."

Hotch checks to make sure the sudden anger hasn't bled out through his grip, consciously loosening his fingers and maintaining an easy pressure on Adam's shoulders. He doesn't like the intimidation of any of his agents, no matter how new. "That's just another opportunity to catch him," Hotch says. He puts enough conviction in his voice for Adams to finally tear his eyes away from the building and look at him, cynical disbelief and hope warring on his face. Hope wins out, for which Hotch is glad. "Yeah," he mutters as they approach the ambulance and the waiting EMT.

The dread of a crime can be worse than the act itself, especially when one is as studied in depravity as a criminal profiler must be; the mind digs deep into all the possibilities and inevitably picks out the worst, most personal cases to haunt itself with. But the thin hope Adams displayed should help build up confidence, however slight, to expect otherwise. That small belief is the team's leverage to deal with anything else that might trouble the man. Hotch gives the rookie one last reassuring squeeze to the arm to try and relay some of that sense of solidarity, then hands him off to the medical professionals.

A few minutes later, Adams is perched on the back of an ambulance with an orange shock blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The blanket, combined with the large trench coat he favors, makes Adams look entirely too small and exhausted and nearly swimming in fabric. Despite the apparent exhaustion, however, he had begun reporting to Hotch what had happened in the warehouse in a slowly steadying voice, along with a rough description of the Unsub that's not entirely helpful. "It was dark," Adams says apologetically while Hotch tries not to frown in disappointment. Male, white, probably mid-twenties, but with room for error on both sides of the estimate – nothing the profile hadn't already told them.

It's not Adams' fault, however, so Hotch changes the subject to a question that's been eating away at him: "How did he bring you to the warehouse?" He'd seen neither cars nor car tracks outside the warehouse aside from those made by official vehicles – and the dirtied, broken-up concrete surrounding the building would have left clear marks had anything heavy as a car driven over it. So how had the Unsub transported one of their agents here?

Hotch asked the question in as soothing a voice as he could manage without being too babying, but Adams flinches in response all the same. His hands clench the mess of fabric surrounding him closer and his head dips low – an instinctual hunkering down to protect vulnerability. He wets his lips with a nervous, darting tongue, then mutters, "He got my gun and made me get in a car. He parked it down the road a little and had me walk the rest of the way. "

Hotch was hoping for more information on the abduction than one terse sentence, but he isn't going to push it now. Instead, he nods and waves over a patrolman, stepping away from Adams' earshot but remaining in his line of sight to order the man, "Take him back to the motel and keep a twenty-four hour guard posted outside." He doesn't think the Unsub will come back tonight – he's had his chance and willingly gave it up – but there's no harm in prudence, not to mention the peace of mind it might give Adams. The cop nods his understanding and goes to get a patrol car.

Hotch returns to Adams and informs him of the current arrangement. "I'll see you in the morning," Hotch says as the younger man struggles out from under the heavy blanket, adjusting his coat as he slowly rises to his feet.

From beside another car, Morgan steps into Adams' path to proffer the other man's service pistol. Adams takes it with shaky gratitude and Morgan nods once, projecting reassurance and strength for the younger man to soak up. He fumbles the holster as he returns the weapon to his hip, but it seems to do him good to have his weapon back, and Hotch is grateful for the gesture. They wait together as Adams slowly shuffles to the patrol car and folds himself into the passenger seat, studiously examining his fingers until the patrolman drives away over the single decaying road leading away from the warehouse. Then Morgan looks at Hotch.

"It doesn't make sense. Why did he want Adams – because he fit the victimology? But then the Unsub doesn't give him a scratch – which I'm grateful for, don't get me wrong. But…" Morgan frowns. "We're not seeing the whole picture here, Hotch. Something doesn't fit. This guy wasn't into mind games with his other victims."

"I know," Hotch says as he stares down the road with a thoughtful frown. "We need to reevaluate."

* * *

><p>Methos steps into his motel room and doesn't relax until he has closed the door and set the chain, allowing himself to forget for a moment how much of the safety he feels is an illusion. The door is made of cheap pine that would take little effort to smash though, splintering away from the deadbolt and chain as easily as the hinges. The window in his room is made of glass just as cheap.<p>

He does a circuit of the room, tracking mud all over the carpet, before unclipping his gun and badge from his belt and depositing it on the dresser next to his overnight bag, kicking off his muddied shoes and leaving them on the floor near the rest of his things. The knives, after a moment's silent debate, stay where they are. They'll be uncomfortable to sleep with, but worth the added protection. With a brother like Kronos, paranoia was always beneficial.

Methos ignores the bed for the chair tucked in the corner, settling himself in with a long-legged sprawl uncharacteristic for his current persona. He closes his eyes and starts consciously releasing tension from the muscles in his body, biting into the side of his cheek hard enough to draw blood and using the sharp spot of pain to center his thoughts. _Focus, _he tells himself. The fear of discovery, the intimidation, it's nothing Kronos hasn't tried a thousand times before, jabbing to remind Methos that even legends aren't infallible. He had indulged himself at the warehouse, dredged up and played up his emotions to supplant any suspicion, but now it was time to box them away and allow logic to take hold.

_Predict. Plan.__ Foresee, the way a good tactician should. _The world has gotten so much smaller these days,so small a crime in one hemisphere can reach its long hand across the globe and drag you back, lock you up and leave you easy bait in the Game. Being linked with a serial murderer is not something he wants to risk in this age of ubiquitous surveillance, especially with such a high risk of notoriety with crimes such as these. The safest way to do that would be to play Kronos' little game – but how long could his brother keep up the charade before others realized there was a backstory to their relationship? Nobody had begun asking about the clues Kronos had left, but it was only a matter of time. How long until they started considering him a suspect instead of a victim? Partner instead of plaything?

_You've_ _known Kronos for a thousand years and he hasn't changed. _Methos hasn't either, not really. Not as much as he proclaims to. He's settles into his bones more, banked the impulses and trained himself to think in certain ways, blend into the norm and disguise himself as perfectly unremarkable. But if he digs deep he can still find the emotions, dull and unused to exercise, that makes it so easy to dance with Kronos through the death and suffering of others, to love the screams and how prettily blood fills the valley of wrinkles at the corner of Kronos' eyes when he smiles. _Get into his head and counterstrike. You've played his games before. _He used to chase Kronos, sprinting after the blade and the smile, baring his teeth when Kronos whirled and turned on him, clashing and recoiling, dancing away when it was his turn to flee with a yell as uncomprehending mortals peered fearfully beneath lowered eyes.

It's dangerous now, however. So dangerous to let those emotions bubble up, despite how hungry they've been since a decade ago, when he woke up in a warehouse with his brother's face hovering over him with a smile. He's among cops and profilers, both with keen instincts for things like him. Kronos is pushing him, teasing the Horsemen to the surface among so many who dedicate their lives trying to curtail death, luring him into a delicate tightrope between so many levels of hunter and hunted. It's a response, Methos knows, to the favor he'd asked ten years ago. He'd wanted to play Adam Pierson, Methos the wise, MacLeod's buddy in arms. He'd wanted to walk on the side of the sanctimonious for a change, testing the waters on the other side of the divide. Now if he ever hoped to escape this life free of chains, he'd have to test that same mild-mannered act with the best minds of the American FBI.

He just hopes Kronos has contingency plans for them both if he fails.

(In the morning, as Methos is packing his meager belongings before boarding the jet back to Quantico, he will dig into the bottom of his bag and discover a small bronze figurine attached to a keychain. He won't know when exactly Kronos broke into his room to leave it there, but for the duration of this lifetime it will never leave the confines of his overnight bag. The figurine is a distorted, sallow skull, eyes bugged out in pain or insanity and mouth open in a silent howl. Half of its face is overlaid with blue dye, and when Methos runs his fingers over it, the smell of woad will linger on them for days.

_Dangerous, brother, _he wants to say. _So very dangerous. _And then the scent wafts up once again, calming his racing heart, and Methos' gaze unfocus as his mind drifts back millenia.)


End file.
